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Caring About Politics

In The Conversation, David Brooks and Gail Collins talk between columns every Wednesday.

David Brooks: Gail, for the past few weeks, I’ve been collecting string for a column on why young people should care a lot more about politics. And when I say collecting string I mean piling up books and articles on the subject without ever working up the willpower to actually read them.

Gail Collins: Oh yes, collecting string. It is second only to the myth of “the backup column.” The column that you will keep in storage just in case whatever you’re doing doesn’t work out. Which in the real world is devoured as fast as a warm chocolate-chip cookie.

David: Not a lot of people are following politics closely this year. Four years ago, pollsters asked Americans if they found the presidential race interesting. A clear plurality said yes. This year, a clear plurality says no. Somehow they find a race between two androids less than scintillating.Gail: Well, duh. You have the dramatic change-guy who didn’t seem to change anything – although I personally would argue that health care alone was huge. And on the other side, the incredibly boring businessman who has offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands to avoid the taxes most of the rest of the country has to pay.

David: We may be entering an era in which politics is less central. A lot has happened recently — jobs numbers, a health care law upheld, new immigration policies, zillions of dollars in ad spending. And the polls have hardly moved. Obama had a tiny lead four months ago and he has a tiny lead now. Nobody’s mind is being changed because nobody who is persuadable is paying attention. It’s apathy city.

Gail: David, don’t feel bad. I’m happy to tell you it’s the Republicans’ fault. The normal rule of democracy is that if things are lousy, you throw out the incumbents. But right now the opposition is controlled by people who are totally insane and good at nothing but shutting things down. I would argue that the president, with a Congress composed mainly of Democrats and traditional Republicans, could take care of a lot of our problems. But if people simply want a change, all they’ve got is the Forces of Loony Doom.

David: Gail, did you accidentally leave the TV on and absorb a night’s worth of MSNBC subliminally in your sleep? Your partisan ya-yas are flowing. By the way, if you did, have you seen the world’s most embarrassing promo spots, the ones directed by Spike Lee in which the hosts are put in front of some big infrastructure project or the White House and forced to give a pious speech as if they are high school kids running to be Robert Moses? Why can’t MSNBC hosts unionize and put an end to this humiliation?

Anyway, the topic at hand is apathy. Granted, I studiously ignore stories about fund-raising numbers. I have never seen compelling evidence that fund-raising levels powerfully influenced a presidential race. Whether Romney outraises Obama or vice versa is totally unimportant.

Gail: Although, the billionaires, good grief.

David: But I still follow the other political news closely and I still think politics is the most complicated and consequential of human activities, and very much worth obsessing about. I often mention to goo-goo types that Haiti has thousands of N.G.O.’s, which are presumably doing good work (well, at least half of them). But if the politicians don’t get governance right, there’s only so much anyone else can do. The place will still be a wreck. Politics matters.

Gail: No argument here. It’s the Tea Party forces on the Republican side who don’t actually believe in politics. They have a my-way-or-the-highway mentality that won’t go away until they get the message that most Americans don’t want to shut down large parts of the government, privatize entitlements, privatize education, etc.

David: I think you’re a bit over the top here. If there is anybody who wants to eliminate entitlements, I haven’t met that person. Wanting to reform the schools with charters is not exactly handing them over to Enron. Even Paul Ryan wants government to consume about 19 percent of G.D.P., which is nearly twice as big as it was under F.D.R.

The big argument is over the shape of government and its size, within limits. And I continue to believe that electoral politics presents the sternest character test, especially these days. The job of being a senator or even president just stinks.

Gail: On that last point, I totally agree. Very few people appreciate how hard it is.

David: Imagine all the fund-raising. Imagine all the travel. Imagine all the criticism. These people do it because they are emotional freaks (O.K., I grant that) but also because they want to do good for the country. To run for office, you have to play close attention to what other people want. You have to balance the demands of marketing with the cry of conscience. You get mercilessly punished for each bad decision or unfortunate word, not to mention everything good that you do. We think ill of our politicians not because they are so rotten, but because the tasks are so hard. How can this drama not be interesting?

Gail: I have always loved politics. I have always loved politicians. They are generally truly humble people, even though they’re egomaniacs. They understand how much they’re under the thumb of average folks back home.

David: I was going through the decades of the 20th century to try to see which of them were primarily political decades. That is to say, was the most important thing that happened that decade political or not? My results follow:

Gail: Hmmm. Just coming from my own special thing, I would argue that feminism was political. But go on.

David: Yeah, I know, the personal is political and all that. But one has to draw lines.

In at least half the decades, politics was the most important thing that happened, though to be fair in the happier decades politics took a back seat. I think this vindicates my feeling that anybody who is not paying close attention is not paying attention to the one of the main arenas of life in their time. You can try to ignore politics, but it won’t ignore you.

Gail: Of course I agree with you. But I can see how this particular campaign is turning a lot of people off. And now that I think of it, I might have been too quick in giving up on the issue of the “super PACs” and their endless money.

Folks in the true-blue or really-red states feel as if their votes don’t matter, and they’re sort of right – it’s as if they’ve already been counted. And people in the swing states are under such a barrage of attack ads from both sides, they’re numb with disdain for everybody involved. I have family visiting from Ohio right now, and they’re like refugees from a TV-ad tsunami. And it’s only July! There’s got to be a better way.